Canada's first radio station goes off the air

MONTREAL — Canada's first radio station fell silent Friday night, as Canadian media and entertainment empire Corus Entertainment Inc., pulled the plug on two Montreal AM stations.

AM Info690 Montreal and AM940 Montreal's Greatest Hits went off the air at 7 p.m. local time. Both were deemed unprofitable.

AM940 is a direct descendent of Canada's first radio station, CFCF originally at the 600 dial on the AM band.

In 1919, the Canadian Marconi Co., launched XWA (Experimental Wireless Apparatus) in Montreal and it became the first commercial broadcast radio station in Canada. The name was switched to CFCF in November 1920.

Before the station signals were killed, recordings ran most of the day. They were made by general managers of the respective stations, thanking listeners and advertisers, and explaining it was a difficult decision to close the stations.

"We put tremendous effort into trying to find the right format and content to grow our audience base and operate profitably, but after years of effort, it is clear these AM stations are not viable," Mario Cecchini, vice-president of subsidiary Corus Quebec, said in a prepared statement.

Brian Kenemy, a former vice-president of Corus Quebec's English radio holdings, said in an interview that he thinks Corus "did its best to hang on as long as they could, looking for affordable formats."

But with most money directed toward FM programming, Kenemy suggested that the public company found it too difficult to continue supporting the struggling stations.

Bourget MNA Maka Kotto, Parti Quebecois culture and communications critic, argued the closing of Info690 "is not good news because it sounds the death knell of another francophone newsroom in Montreal and further undermines the media in Quebec."

The decision to cease operations affects eight jobs at Info690 — three journalists, two traffic reporters and three operations positions — but five of those positions are to be retained.

The Info690 Montreal newsroom, known as CorusNouvelles, will continue its activities as part of 98.5 FM Montreal.

Two jobs, an on-air host and a technician, are affected at AM940, which switched from all news to all music in 2008.

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